Photos

My grand plan of putting lots of pics on this site have been slightly hampered by most internet cafe computers not having USB ports, my forgetting to bring the drivers for my camera and the speed of most computers being about the same as a geriatric snail...but slowly (and I mean very slowly) I am trying to upload them. So some of them are now in the photos links to the right of this page. They are not all there yet and they haven't been given names (because that would take another 50 hours) but I will keep trying until they are all there. Then I will figure out how to post a few pics on this page!

Weekend fun

Well I´ve finished my first week of actual work. It´s not as much fun as you would think. First of all, none of my classes are actually in Heredia they are in the offices of businessmen near Heredia. They are actually near (ish) but getting to them invoves picking a random bus that seems to be heading in the right direction and hoping.... Suprisingly this method doesn´t seem to be too successful and inevitably I will panick and grab a ripoff taxi to take me to the office that costs about the same amount as I am being paid for the class. Hmmm... oh well! on the other hand I´ve been seeing a lot of the local scenery. And my Spanish is improving especially the "Donde esta....?" questions. Unfortunately I can´t understand any of the replies unless the person points.

Did I tell you I am translating a botany book from Spanish into English? Yes indeed, soon there will be a little obscure book about the Trees of Costa Rica out in the publishing world with the words ´translated by Bethel Smith´ and at last I will be immortal. Now, I´m hoping that it will be a little obscure book that noone reads because I haven´t got a clue what I´m translating so I´m just making it up as I go along. All the words I can´t find in the dictionary I am assuming are Latin. Anyone who knows anything about botany (in particular, what on earth a 'ligulate' is)
please help!!!!


I went back to Raquel´s house on Friday night to go out with Shelly. We went to Tobogan, another latin dance bar, but it was full of old people so we left and returned to the mother ship..Planet Mall. Now weve been going there for weeks and as always the dancing was amazing to watch. But the problem with latin dancing is that you have to have someone to dance with... we could´t find anyone to dance with us and came to the conclusion that we need boyfriends, quickly. So my new mission is to find myself a man... I´m not fussy, just someone who will ask me to dance occasionally and that I can practice my spanish on will do. I´ll let you know how it goes....

My new home... Heredia

So...I packed everything I own back into my backpack (actually my backpack, a new book back and about 20 plastic bags....I swear to god my belongings just multiply everytime I leave the room!!!), flagged down a taxi and waved goodbye to Raquel and her crazy ways. 20 minutes later we pulled up at my lovely new home. As far as I could tell everything was perfect until I went to check out the bathroom...NO BLOODY TOILET PAPER! I dont get it! Maybe theres some kind of huge tax on bog roll in Costa Rica. sigh! I guess thats god's way of telling me to get my arse down to the shops and buy my own!!! On the bright side though I do have an industrial sized fan that takes up half the room and if I turn it up to full blast, feels like sitting in a wind tunnel. I also have a tv that is constantly on the ear bleeding top volume setting and a delapidated fridge that tips up everytime I open the door. But I'm happy to have my own little space to settle down in for a while.

As well as housing foreigners, the lady who owns the house (whose name I cannot remeber properly or even begin to spell) also runs a kind of hairdresser's training school (could be handy for a free cut if I'm feeling brave). She seems lovely but this morning at breakfast, when i told her I didn't like milk (hoping for a selection of lovely fresh fruit instead), she just gave me a bowl of dry frosties. oh well.

oh and by the way I got an email from INBio telling me that the botany department is very excited about my arrival and would I be interested in translating one of their books into English...Well I have had a months worth of Spanish lessons. What the hell! I'll give it a go...............

The plan.....

Ok, so I'm staying at the school for one more week. Partly because I needed a bit more time to figure out what I'm doing next and also because we are starting the intermediate book this week...so exciting!!! Next week I will move to Heredia. A really nice small town only a 20 minute bus ride away from San Jose. But it's a lot calmer and safer. I found another homestay close to the centre of town with a nice old lady and her grandsons. Heredia is close to INBio too. So the plan is to work at INBio Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays and to teach English on Tuesdays and Thursdays to help cover costs. I had an interview with a language institute last Friday who want teachers to teach business English to office workers in Heredia. So I'm moving on Saturday and will start work on Monday. I'll probably stay about 4 months until the rainy season is over and then I'll move on.

Spanish is such fun.........

Can I just say if I ever meet the guy who invented Spanish with its silly pronunciation, verbs that mean the same thing, stem changes, irregular verbs, pronouns, reflexive verbs, 1001 tenses all with the same endings but swapped around a bit...I'll break his neck!!!

By the Way...............

Happy Birthday Daniel!!!

Of Course, My Horse!!!

It was all going so well, we were eating healthy food, we went to the gym everyday, we were being studious. Then in a moment of madness we went to the internet cafe and forgot to call our Mama Tica earlier on to tell her we wouldnt need dinner. When we did call, around dinner time, all hell broke loose. Actually that is an exageration but she wasn´t pleased.

Since then me and Shelly have been living at the mall. After school we go straight to the mall, we go shopping, we eat, we study, we watch a movie, I even selflessly sacrifice my kidneys and order some beers at the bar so that we can sit there and wait til shes gone to bed before we get home.

Now Raquel is lovely, most of the time, but we are begining to suspect she is a manic depressive schizophrenic going through the menopause. She speaks hardly any English apart from her favorite phrase "Of course, my horse". She treats her poor little dogs like toys. She cleans our rooms everyday but leaves food out in the kitchen to attract bugs. If we open the door she will come along behind us and shut it complaining about letting insects in, but if she opens the door and we try to shut it to stop insects from coming in she´ll tell us there are no insects!! Shes obsessed with switching all the lights of in the house. Now this is a very worthy energy saving cause, but just not when I´m in the room studying. And worse of all, she wont give us toilet paper!!! Why??? She already buys us the cheapest sandpaper kind. But when it runs out she wont give us anymore for a couple of days. Yesterday it was raining and she was out all day, we used up all the toilet paper and then used all of the serviettes in the kitchen. We are preparing ourselves for a huge battle when we get home.......I´ll let you know how it goes.

Finally Photos

Thanks to Shelly spending four hours uploading photos from her laptop and nearly crashing every computer in the school, we finally have some photos. Not all of them but understandably Shelly couldnt take anymore and gave up. I´m still figuring out how this whole blog thing works and pictures make it even more complicated But I´ll start putting some of the pictures on the blog soon.

INBio

Today I went to meet a lady from INBio about doing some voluntary work there. INBio park is the nearest national park to San Jose and is more like a zoo with enclosures and educational stuff. But they are also currently making a huge inventory of all the plant and animal species in Costa Rica. They train local people to go out and collect the specemins which get sent to INBio who then identify it and put it on an internet database. I´ll probably do a mixture of working on the database and teaching English to the staff. It looks like a really good experience and they all seem like really nice people. I can´t wait!!!